Why I co-founded Nuhom
I bought my first multi-family home in 2019, a 3-unit in Everett, MA. Although I was somewhat familiar with home buying, the process was still slow, lacked transparency, and the paperwork was confusing.
Innovation has touched many sectors in recent decades. Technology and consumer behavioral shifts have forced many companies that support these industries to evolve. But real estate, and particularly buying a home has not changed much. It is true that home buyers use tools like Zillow and Redfin to find their home. It isn't surprising that 6 out of 10 home buyers find their home they ultimately buy without an agent, and 9 out of 10 start their home search online. Technology has empowered house hunters, yet, for the majority of the process, we still buy homes the way our parents and grandparents did.
“...we still buy homes the way our parents and grandparents did.”
As a first time home buyer, there were many daunting tasks I had to encounter. I spent weeks house hunting, going from open houses to private tours across different neighborhoods and towns. When I finally found the home, my buyer agent provided a competitive pricing analysis, submitted the offer, handled the negotiations, and got the offer accepted. Once the offer was accepted I had to secure financing, complete my home inspection, and submit the purchase and sales agreement to the seller. After this was done I waited just over a month for the closing date to sign the closing documents and receive my keys. This is an over simplified description of what happened when I bought my home. But the reality is, this process can be different for every buyer, as there are multiple hand-offs and communications that happen between the agent, buyer, seller, lender, attorney, and inspection services. To add to these inefficiencies, the process was mostly manual, and not digitized.
Buying a home should not be difficult. It should be more accessible, simple, and transparent. This is why Rishi Palriwala, my co-founder and I started Nuhom - to make home buying painless, fast, and rewarding for the modern home buyer, and have real estate catch up with the times.
My Journey So Far
For the better part of my career I have worked in the digital space trying to understand customer behaviors to develop product experiences that are simple, engaging, and impactful.
Recently I lead the Mobile and Innovation team at Staples. There I helped shape the future of e-commerce by building digital solutions to engage people, and drove product vision, strategy and roadmaps to deliver better customer experiences.
We worked on applications that made it easy for customers to transact, while predicting what customers needed before they themselves knew they did. We built AR and VR solutions to create immersive shopping experiences, an IoT solution to help our customers replenish their supplies without worrying about running out, and built a voice activated AI device similar to Alexa to name a few.
Some of these projects never made it to production, but our customer obsession and love for tech allowed us to approach problems in unique ways, be intellectually curious, and continuously innovate our products.
And now at Nuhom, I have the opportunity to bring an e-commerce product lens to real estate where home buyers can have a seamless experience from searching to buying the home they love, all online.
We Are Building The Future Of Home Buying
At Nuhom we are on a mission to change how people buy real estate. We are taking a buyer first-approach, re-imagining the process, and replacing it with innovative technology, far fewer hurdles, and more savings for the home buyer. This will require solving some hard engineering problems, designing a buyer centric experience, connecting and synthesizing various data sources, and re-valuing the touch-points across the home buying journey.
We recognize the technological and behavioral shifts that are happening, and believe it’s the right time for real estate to evolve.
We have an incredible founding team and mentors. And now we are on the lookout for talented engineers, creative designers, marketers, and data scientists who care about what they build, and who want to help millions of people find the most important place in the world, home.
Join us
Nuhom is a Boston based full-service real estate tech company making home buying convenient, fast, and rewarding. We have dismantled the traditional home buying process and replaced it with innovative technology, far fewer hurdles, and more savings for the modern home buyer. Learn more at www.nuhom.co